Plus, for God’s sake, Zev’s OP is in fucking California!!!
Show me the Israeli suicide bombers in civilian Palistinian neighborhoods, hell, show me the Israeli military using anything except the utmost restraint when attacking the terrorists who knowingly hide themselves behind a shield of innocent civilians (not no civilian deaths, I know there have been some of them, too many, but show me wanton wholesale targeting of civilians by the IDF). Show me Jewish children told that the greatest thing they will ever achieve is to blow themselves to pieces before they’re through puberty as long as Palestinians are hurt and killed too. Show me an Israel that calls for genocide against Palestinians en mass rather then granting Arab citizens full voting rights and even allowing them to serve in the Knesset. If you can do that, then we’ll talk. Until then, maybe you ought to look at exactly who it is in the middle east that keeps the cauldron of hate simmering. Bullshit propaganda? Next time, you should put the subject of your post in the subject line, not bury it in the text, it’ll be easier to see that way.
leander,
Firstly, i’ve never seen any indication that Zev is unwilling to countenance the idea that some Jews have an irrational and unproductive hatred for Palestinians. He’s never struck me as some raving loony who believes that the Palestinians are inherently evil, or that Israel shares none of the blame for the current situation (you can, of course, correct me if i’m wrong about this, Zev). It just so happens that this thread is devoted to exposing some particularly ugly behaviour.
Another problem with your position is that, even if your post were completely accurate, it’s not sufficient to say “Hey, they do it, too.” That’s an intellectually and morally unsustainable position, in my opinion, and is no better than the Republicans and Democrats who constantly defend their own party simply by pointing out how bad the other party is. The principle in situations like this is (or should be) to get one’s own house in order, and to point out hatred and bigotry wherever it happens to be, rather than using the hatred and bigotry of one group as an excuse for or a distraction from the hatred and bigotry of another.
Well, the rest of your post is reasonably unproblematic, but anyone who believes that the IDF always uses “utmost restraint” is genuinely or wilfully ignorant on the matter.
There was an interesting paper written a few years back on a study conducted concering Israeli kids and their views of Palestinians and the conflict. Arab News then wrote an article with a bunch of made-up bullshit; WND then turned around and exposed this with even more bullshit. Here’s an article discussing the various lies and twists. And here, if you’re really interested and have some time, is the original paper in .doc form. It’s quite fascinating, especially the vast differences in views between kids living on a kibbutz vs. kids living in the city or on a settlement. But pay attention to “delegitimisation” and ask yourself where that may come from.
As to the Palestinian education, again, if you’re interested, use this link to read a (long) study of it.
People like you. Thank you for making my point in such an animated fashion.
And here I thought that on the SDMB we don’t take a couple of yahoos and use them to make vast generalizations about a whole group of people. Let me put it simply: If you believe that all Palestinian people are teaching their children to hate, want them to be martyrs, etc., then you are part of the problem and not the solution. You are adding anger and misunderstanding and hatred, like our friend Weirddave above, to an already shitty situation. How does that help?
on preview: mhendo you have some good points. My purpose was not to simply say “they do it, too.” The point was that until people on both sides address the hatred in themselves about this issue, and quit just pointing fucking fingers, then nothing will get done. Pretending that only one side harbors deep-seated resent and ill-will is rather naive and unproductive, no?
And no, I don’t think Zev is a raving loon at all. But his bias is obvious. I don’t fault him for that, as we all have biases and leanings, particularly on such a difficult and personal issue. But as this thread started with “a couple of assholes” and turned into “why can’t all those damn Palestinians clean up their act”, I question whether this was just an excercise in proganda and sympathy-gathering.
Though I most certainly could be wrong. But usually here on the SDMB, when someone posts about a particularly despicable character (which happens nearly everyday), others rarely jump in to demonize and delegitimize an entire group.
Even during peaceful times the Palestinian population generally polls at about 70 to eighty some odd percent in support of suicide bombings.
This isn’t a culture which endorses hate?
You’ve seen the PLO charter, right?
Pray tell, oh eminent sage, how I, a humble man who is neither Palestinian nor Israeli, neither Muslim nor Jew, am “keeping the cauldron of hate in the middle east simmering”. That’s an awful lot of power for me to have, I’d like more details, maybe I can use it to win Powerball or something.
That’s simply a matter of semantics and degree. Lemmie ask you a question: Suppose you’re walking out of Rocky Run Tap and Grill (Good restaurant, BTW, you should check it out if you haven’t yet). At the same time, a crook who has just shot someone in a mugging runs by, exchanging gunfire with the police chasing him. You are hit. When the bullet is removed and studied, it turns out it came from a cop’s gun. Who’s at fault, the cops or the crook? In my book this is 100% the crook’s fault (in general-a crook spraying bullets down crowded street, the cops trying to stop him) If Palestinians are hiding terrorists amongst their general population, they have no beef if they get hurt when the people that terrorist attacked come calling. I got no sympathy. None.
Beyond even that, the fact that the IDF takes any precautions against the unintended injury or death of innocent civilians (and you can argue if they take enough or not all night, that’s simply a discussion of degree) when going after people who have murdered or harmed Israelis is light years beyond what any Palestinian resistance group (of which I am aware) takes. The IDF at least recognizes that limiting civilian casualties is a desirable thing, Palestinian terrorists deliberately set out to maximize civilian casualties. There is no way you can call these two things equal or two sides of the same coin or anything similar at all.
“People like you.”
Good luck with the lotto.
That’s it? Care to explain what you meant, you do you just post hoping to get a reaction, and then steal away into the night? There’s a name for that you know.
Geez, Dave, i knew we disagreed about some things, but i never imagined that you would actually describe Rocky Run as a good restaurant. Yeesh. 
If all the situations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were analogous to your description, i might agree with you, but they patently are not. Your story assumes that all Palestinians killed by Israeli troops have been killed in the course of a direct attempt to apprehend a suicide bomber/terroist, and your analogy also draws a legal distinction between cop and crook that is inapplicable to much of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For the record, i don’t believe the IDF is always reckless or at fault in these situations. And i also believe that many (probably most) members of the IDF are good Israelis who really want to do nothing more than serve their country and try to maintain some peace and stability. But there have just been too many instances where unarmed civilians, often children, have ended up as victims when a little more restraint by the Israeli forces would have meant a much better outcome for everyone.
For me, an interesting thing about this whole issue is that the discussion about IDF problems are actually much more frank within Israel, and within the Israeli media and press, than they are here in the supposedly-neutral United States. Of course, Israelis who have problems with their own government and defense forces’ actions are often dismissed by American Zionists as cranks or even traitors, but it might surprise a lot of Americans to know that they are a serious part of the conversation in Israel itself.
Show me where i said “equal” or “two sides of the same coin.” I didn’t. Never even came close to suggesting it. And you’re adopting the same bankrupt tactic that i criticized leander for earlier—excusing one side by simply asserting that the other side is worse.
Also, your framework accepts as a given something that should, in fact, be up for debate—the question of what rights the Palestinians have to fight for their own nation and their independence. Of course, you’d probably argue that they should restrict their attacks to the IDF. Just like Native Americans, presumably, should have fought fair and restricted their military campaigns to head-on confrontations with the US Army. I have no trouble condemning the attacks on civilians carried out by Palestininans—they are inexcusable and should be repudiated in the strongest possible terms. I’m just depressed that, so often, armed forces that pay a pathetic lip-service to civilian casualites, while killing many civilians, are excused with nary a whimper.
I don’t know if you’re having a brain freeze tonight or what, but I seems pretty simple to me. The sort of vitriolic, foaming at the mouth defense of Israel and condemnation of Palestine is exactly the kind of anger that fuels this whole nasty back-and-forth. It’s people like you, whether they are over here in the States or half-way across the world, who are fomenting the continued aggressive, closed-minded battle precluding any end. Got it?
And please don’t even imply that I’m trolling simply because you either can’t follow along or disagree with what I’m saying. Or if you do, at least have the balls to come right out and say it.
Zev, I was horrified by that link. I should know better than to click on them when I know what the content must be, but… That kid will haunt my nightmares. And I don’t think I smiled that widely on my first trip to Disneyland.
Not your parents’ Berkeley, indeed…
Two things.
Allow me to point out while Zev can’t…
He didn’t have any frothing in his OP. He pointed out another example of blood libel, a type of anti-jewish propaganda that’s followed us for one hell of a long time. Whether it’s stealing organs from palestinians or whether it’s using the blood of Christian children during seders…it’s heinous and it’s appalling that anyone could believe it or even use it for propaganda purposes in our soi-disant enlightened age.
And this…
Right, because the tactics pursued by Native American warriors during the 1800s worked so damn well for them that their entire culture and people came within a gnats whiskers of being eradicated.
Any conflict that uses terror tactics will eventually end up as a no-holds-barred conflict if something doesn’t intervene to stop it. By using such tactics the palestinian leadership (both the PA and the others) widen the conflict. And by defining it as a war of extermination they open themselves to being on the losing end of such.
Far better the Palestinians showed any political sophistication and used Gandhian tactics than staying with a course that hasn’t produced anything more than lip service towards acheiving their goals.
Let’s try to focus on the OP rather than looking for buzzwords or triggers for our own bias, shall we?
The OP involved very little vitriol. Ok, maybe a slight pungency. True, it was in defense of Israel in that it condemned calumny and the blood libel. This is a bad thing?
And sure, it drew attention to a bunch of fuckwads who demonstrated their support of Palestine/ hatred of Israel (which is apparently okeedokee, since you choose to condemn Zev for merely bringing their actions to our/your attention).
Nothing particularly near the “foaming at the mouth” level.
If anyone’s bias is showing, it’s yours.
Is there something in the water tonight or what? I was responding directly to Weirddave’s diatribe. Wasn’t that clear with the little quotes and all?
Sheesh. And certainly I don’t believe the “fuckwads” behaviour was “okeedokee”, as I thought was made clear by my reference to them as assholes.
As to the OP, it wasn’t the fact that Zev slammed a bunch of idiots for acting ridiculously assholish; it was the silly clamoring of fools drawing generalizations and condemning an entire group of people for the actions of a few. (Would you like me to point that out specifically as well?) Which, in fact, was helped along by Zev’s 2nd post…which makes me wonder if that wasn’t the purpose of the thread all along.
But like I said, I could be wrong. And I hope I am.
I gave several examples of behaviors that Israel engaged in compared with behaviors that the Palestinians engaged in, and opined that it was the side that advocated genocide and unrestricted attacks on civilians that was stirring the pot. Unlike you, who seem to have taken the Palestinian claim that they are innocent victims at face value without any question at all, I have looked not only at what both sides are saying, but also what both sides are doing, and I’ve made my judgment from there. I haven’t foamed anything except my latte. I defy you to show me one line in my post that you responded to (#42) that can be classified as “vitriolic,” or “foaming at the mouth defense of Israel”. I FURTHER defy you to deal with the subject of my post, instead of this straw man you’ve created alleging that I’m presenting a spittle flecked diatribe, but I suspect a rational discussion is too much to hope for. Mhendo’s doing a good job for you, however, watch him, you might learn something.
Thank you for proving my point. Can you point to any similar debate (What is appropriate force, what is not, the role of violence in self defense, etc…) that is widespread amongst the Palestinian population? I have never seen any indications of such debate at all, and THAT is my point.
“Equal”, etc was in response to leander who offered the opinion that there was no real difference between the sides. And I am not excusing anything done by either side, I am simply saying that the IDF generally considers the negative impact that their actions will have on the civilian population before acting, while suicide bombers act only to impact the civilian population. There’s a world of difference between the two.
I would argue that if the Palestinians would lobby and peacefully demonstrate for their independence, they would have long had it by now. The question WRT fighting is that if they do decide to fight, they have to be prepared for the consequences when the other guy fights back, or, what Jonathan Chance said.
Have you heard the old George Carlin routine in which kids in a Catholic elementary school were grilling the priest about going to mass on Sunday, “But what if you cross the International Dateline late on Sunday then cross back over when it has turned to Monday–is it still a sin to have missed Sunday mass?” I’ve been in that debate! We learned to debate the Law when we were young, too, though unlike rabbis we were more like “jailhouse lawyers,” always trying to find a way around the rules.
I have mentioned before that I believe Catholics and Jews have more in common than one would think, culturally if not theologically, and since becoming a Lutheran I have missed theological give and take. They’re just so…NICE. :mad: And accomodating. I would NEVER hire a Lutheran lawyer.
“I went to the mat for you, son. We discussed it a good five or six minutes and here’s the deal I hammered out for you: If you plead guilty you’ll get life without parole.”
“But the maximum is twenty years! What kinda deal is that?”
“You have to remember, you ARE guilty. But a pastor will visit you once a week, nice Mrs Paulsen promised to make you some lefse and lutefisk every Christmas, and our outreach theater company will do a play about the trials of prison life for you and the other fellows next month.”
Simplistic and completely ignorant of history and human psychology. Not to mention mostly an emotional argument meant to paint all Israelis as victims and all Palestinians as evil. (Your unwillingness to concede any point to mhendo kinda makes your “rational” position rather transparent, no?) And of course those who advocate genocide and unrestricted attacks are wrong, but do you honestly believe that all Palestinians do so? Have you any contact with ordinary Palestinians (or Israelis for that matter)? Or are you able to simply weigh a few things you’ve heard or read and make a big stupid blanket statement about all those fiery-eyed A-rabs dancing in the streets?
Show me one place where I’ve taken this position. Just because I would like both sides to consider their own faults and responsiblities before laying all the blame on the other does not mean I support Palestine over Israel.
What a load of crap. It’s so abundantly clear from your inability to cede one issue, to take one serious consideration of blame on the Israeli side, that the idea of you having a rational judgement on this issue is absurd.
That was a good line. I like it. Is it original?
Seriously? The whole damn thing is so virulent and over the top that I kept imagining some kind of sweaty old bigoted minister at the lectern with all his ignorant buddies shouting “AMEN!”
You want me to go through each “point” and give you my refutation? What purpose would that serve? All you’re doing (above) is turning around and making every argument “Palestinians bad, Jews good.” This shit has been hashed and rehashed a million times with almost zero movement on either side. (That’s the problem – and my point if you’d ever pry open that thick skull of yours.) Besides, there are plenty of people like you on both sides; I suggest you get together and waste each other’s time.
You’re right. You ought to try listening to him instead of the knee-jerk crap you’re spewing. But no, every silly rebuttal is just a whiny, “but all those evil Palestinians are doing so much worse…”
As for my “straw man”(first it’s trolling, now it’s straw men…), it appears that any kind of argument other than a very basic, simple one is beyond your grasp. Good luck with that.
76.5 percent supported actions taken within pre '67 Israel against civilian targets.
I would call this a systemic problem with how their society orients itself, no?
There are movements within Israel to cede territory, groups like Gush Shalom (whose members aren’t even killed off by their own government, go figure), etc… What sort of move towards peace and negotiation is strong within the Palestinian people?
The difference being that on side does not practice war which targets and maximizes civilian casualties. And one side does. How many nations on earth negotiate with terrorists? Until the deliberate and cold blooded murder of civilians is the standard operating procedure of one ‘side’, there will always be checkpoints and IDF patrols. Stop folks trying to kill civilians, and let’s work out a viable two state solution.
Since '48 Israel has been under attack by most of its Arab neighbors. Azzam Pasha of the arab league announced that '48 was going to be, if my memory serves, a “slaughter to rival the mongols.” Arab residents were urged to flee and when they did, the surrounding Arab countries placed them into refugee camps and did not let them integrate into their population. (It has been said that the Arab world is perfectly willing to fight the conflict in the Holy Land unto the last Palestinian. But I digress)
Was there violence and (yes, the King David hotel) terrorism on both sides in the space leading up to '48? Yeah, and no ‘side’ is innocent there. But by the same token, there was a serious effort made to retain Arab residents and make them citizens of the nascent Israel. They were urged to stay by the Zionists, and told to leave by the invading Arabs.
When the PLO set itself up with a charter, it called for a society dedicated to violent resistance in all aspects. Groups like Hamas have repeatedly targeted civilians, women, children. In a battle like this, peace is preferable… but when your enemy routinely targets your civilians, things get messy. And, if in return, the other ‘side’ allows its military to blend in with its civilians… well, it makes things even messier.
“Until the deliberate and cold blooded murder of civilians isn’t the…”
Yeeesh.
You’ll pardon me a chuckle, i’m sure.
I guess you could say the same about the Israelis, couldn’t you?